Artists

Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned nearly 200 works and, with his ensemble The Crossing (Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year), has produced 33 recordings, winning three GRAMMY® Awards for Best Choral Performance, while nominated nine times. 

The Crossing is a professional chamber choir conducted by Donald Nally, dedicated to performing new music and committed to addressing social, environmental, and political issues through nearly 180 commissioned premieres. Collaborating with prestigious ensembles and venues like the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, Park Avenue Armory, Lincoln Center, and Carnegie Hall, The Crossing has released 33 albums, earning three GRAMMY® Awards for Best Choral Performance and multiple nominations. The Crossing is Musical America's 2024 Ensemble of The Year.

Carol Barnett writes audacious and engaging music. She is known for breaking the mold with meter changes, differing tonal centers, unusual instrument combinations, and her love of fast tempi. Despite these typical thumbprints, Barnett’s works are diverse, uncovering the needs of each piece and each text with her characteristic integrity. Barnett’s varied catalog includes works for solo voice, piano, chorus, diverse chamber ensembles, orchestra, and wind ensemble. 

Deborah Kavasch, composer, soprano, specialist in extended vocal techniques, and music educator, has had works commissioned and performed in North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and China. She has received grants and residencies in composition and performance, was a 1987 Fulbright Senior Scholar to Stockholm, and has appeared in major international music centers and festivals in concerts, solo recitals, workshops, lecture/demonstrations, and television and radio broadcasts since 1981.

American composer and pianist Christopher Jessup is an award-winning artist of formidable prowess. Jessup has garnered international acclaim, with critics praising his “imaginative handling of atmosphere” [Fanfare Magazine] and “high standard of technique” [New York Concert Review]. Furthermore, he has performed at Carnegie Hall countless times, soloed with distinguished orchestras across the globe, and collaborated with some of the finest artists and ensembles of our time.

Laura Ward is pianist and Co-Artistic Director of Lyric Fest. As a distinguished collaborative pianist she is known for both her technical ability and vast knowledge of repertoire and styles. Concert engagements have taken her to Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Spoleto Festival (Italy) and the Colmar International Music Festival and Saint Denis Festival in France.

Richard Thompson is a performer and composer whose work combines African-American and European traditions. Originally from Aberdeen, Scotland, Thompson made his debut as a pianist at the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, in 1984. Thompson’s orchestral appearances include concerts with the Orchestra Nova, San Diego, San Diego State University Symphony Orchestra, Glasgow Chamber Orchestra, and Aberdeen Chamber Orchestra.

Jennifer Jolley (b. 1981) is a composer, conductor, and professor. Her work is founded on the belief that the pleasures and excesses of music have the unique potential to engage political and provocative subjects. Addressing a range of topics such as climate change, #MeToo, feminist history, and the abuses of the Putin regime, Jolley strives to write pieces that are equally enjoyable and meaningful.

Reed Chamberlin serves as director of bands at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he conducts the Nevada Wind Ensemble, teaches conducting, and guides the band program. He holds a doctor of musical arts degree in conducting from the Eastman School of Music where he was the assistant conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, a Fennell Conducting Fellow, and recipient of the Walter Hagen Prize in conducting.

The nationally recognized Nevada Wind Ensemble is the flagship wind and percussion ensemble at the University of Nevada, Reno. Using one-per-part instrumentation, the Wind Ensemble performs a broad repertoire of classic and contemporary styles, ranging from large band works to chamber pieces. The ensemble tours regularly throughout the Western United States and provides the opportunity to collaborate with world-class guest conductors and guest artists. The group consists of graduate and undergraduate students.

Yuriy Bekker, critically-acclaimed violinist and conductor, has been a mainstay of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra (CSO) in Charleston SC for 15 years. He has recently been named the CSO’s artistic director and also continues to lead as concertmaster (2007) and principal pops conductor (2016). Bekker previously served as the orchestra’s Acting Artistic Director from 2010–2014, playing a major role in the orchestra’s successful resurgence.

Thomas Cabaniss (b. Charleston SC, 1962) is a composer for dance, theater, film, and the concert stage. Cabaniss helped to create the Lullaby Project at Carnegie Hall, serving young parents in shelters, hospitals, and prisons with collaboratively created songs for their children. He has been teaching at Juilliard in the Dance Division since 1998 and in the Music Division since 2007. He served as education director for the New York Philharmonic and Music Animateur at the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has written articles for Chamber Music Magazine and the Teaching Artist Journal. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes, European American Music, G. Schirmer, and musiCreate publiCations. He is a member of ASCAP and an associated artist of Target Margin Theater.

Acclaimed as “dynamic and knowledgeable” by the Buenos Aires Herald, Croatian conductor Miran Vaupotić has worked with eminent orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Russian National Orchestra, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MÁV, Orchestre de Chambre de Genève, the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Argentina, and others, performing in major halls around the globe such as Carnegie Hall, Wiener Musikverein, Berliner Philharmonie, Rudolfinum, Smetana Hall, Victoria Hall, Forbidden City Concert Hall, Shanghai Oriental Art Center, Dubai Opera, Tchaikovsky Hall, International House of Music, CBC Glenn Gould Studio, and more.

Gustav Hoyer was born in Denver CO in 1972. His musical pursuits began in high school following a life-changing encounter with the music of Beethoven and Mozart. He subsequently studied music theory, piano, and violin and pursued collegiate degrees in composition. He has written music for a wide variety of ensembles, media, and settings. His recorded music has been heard in film, on radio, and in performance around the world. He continues to create new orchestral music that draws on the tools of classical vocabulary while fully modern in their contemplations. 

The Brno Contemporary Orchestra (BCO) was founded in 2011 with the aim of performing the world’s contemporary music and selected 20th-century works in Czechia and Czech music throughout the world. The ensemble includes top-level professional musicians employed in the leading Czech orchestras. It draws on a large pool of permanent collaborators who perform in various lineups according to the needs of each project.

The Janáček Philharmonic is a world-class symphony orchestra based in Ostrava, Czech Republic and an emerging figure on the international performance scene. With over 100 top-level musicians, the orchestra aims to introduce unique, quality repertoire while showcasing their own recognizable sound.

Sarah Wallin Huff is a music lecturer at California Polytechnic University of Pomona, teaching “History of Technology in Music,” for which she published an original textbook with Great River Learning in 2019. She received her M.A. in Music Composition at Claremont Graduate University in 2008, and was the Professor of Composition and Advanced Theory — as well as conductor of the Chamber Ensemble — at The Master’s University in Santa Clarita from 2012-2016.

Phillip Rhodes was born in Forest City, North Carolina in 1940 and received degrees from Duke University and the Yale University School of Music. His principal teachers have been William Klenz, Iain Hamilton, Donald Martino, and Mel Powell.

“Full of charm and shapely allure” (Opera News) and “a tapestry of immense grace” (Textura) are some of the praises Christopher J. Hoh has received for his music. He grew up in Reading PA and was influenced as a young singer and accompanist by great works under conductors in Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington. He has been in Alice Parker’s composer seminar as well as workshops with Jean Berger, Daniel Moe, Robert Page, and Craig Jessop. 

Jiří Petrdlík (b. 1977) is appreciated as one of the most respectable conductors of his generation. He studied piano, trombone, and conducting — 1995–2000 at Prague Conservatory, and 2000–2005 at Academy of Performing Arts Prague — with Hynek Farkač, Miroslav Košler, Miriam Němcová, Radomil Eliška, and Tomáš Koutník, and took part in the masterclasses of the New York Philharmonic Principal Conductor Kurt Masur and the BBC Philharmonic Principal Conductor Jiří Bělohlávek. Petrdlík also successfully took part in several competitions, including the Donatella Flick Conductor Competition in London.